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“Can it be that you have guessed what no one in the world, no, not even dear old Jack, dreams Oh, I shall go mad, mad, mad!”

Kennedy was on his feet in an instant, advancing toward her. The look in his eyes was answer enough for her. She knew that he knew, and she paled and shuddered, shrinking away from him.

“Miss Bond,” he said in a voice that forced attention–it was low and vibrating with feeling–“Miss Bond, have you ever told a lie to shield a friend?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes meeting his.

“So can I,” came back the same tense voice, “when I know the truth about that friend.”

Then for the first time tears came in a storm. Her breath was quick and feverish. “No one will ever believe, no one will understand. They will say that I killed him, that I murdered him.”

Through it all I stood almost speechless, puzzled. What did it all mean?

“No,” said Kennedy, “no, for they will never know of it.”

“Never know?”

“Never–if in the end justice is done. Have you the will? Or did you destroy it?”

It was a bold stroke.

“Yes. No. Here it is. How could I destroy it, even though it was burning out my very soul?”

She literally tore the paper from the bosom of her dress and cast it from her in horror and terror.

Kennedy picked it up, opened it, and glanced hurriedly through it. “Miss Bond,” he said, “Jack shall never know a word of this. I shall tell him that the will has been found unexpectedly in John Fletcher’s desk among some other papers. Walter, swear on your honour as a gentleman that this will was found in old Fletcher’s desk.”

“Dr. Kennedy, how can I ever thank you?” she exclaimed, sinking wearily down into a chair and pressing her hands to her throbbing forehead.

“By telling me just how you came by this will, so that when you and Fletcher are married I may be as good a friend, without suspicion, to you as I am to him. I think a full confession would do you good, Miss Bond. Would you prefer to have Dr. Jameson not hear it?”

“No, he may stay.”

“This much I know, Miss Bond. Last summer in Paris with the Greenes you must have chanced to hear, of Pillard, the Apache, one of the most noted cracksmen the world has ever produced. You sought him out. He taught you how to paint your fingers with a rubber composition, how to use an electric drill, how to use the old-fashioned jimmy. You went down to Fletcherwood by the back road about a quarter after eleven the night of the robbery in the Greenes’ little electric runabout. You entered the library by an unlocked window, you coupled your drill to the electric light connections of the chandelier. You had to work quickly, for the power would go off at midnight, yet you could not do the job later, when they were sleeping more soundly, for the very same reason.”

It was uncanny as Kennedy rushed along in his reconstruction of the scene, almost unbelievable. The girl watched him, fascinated.

“John Fletcher was wakeful that night. Somehow or other he heard you at work. He entered the library and, by the light streaming from his bedroom, he saw who it was. In anger he must have addressed you, and his passion got the better of his age–he fell suddenly on the floor with a stroke of apoplexy. As you bent over him he died. But why did you ever attempt so foolish an undertaking? Didn’t you know that other people knew of the will and its terms, that you were sure to be traced out in the end, if not by friends, by foes? How did you suppose you could profit by destroying the will, of which others knew the provisions?”

Any other woman than Helen Bond would have been hysterical long before Kennedy had finished pressing home remorselessly one fact after another of her story. But, with her, the relief now after the tension of many hours of concealment seemed to nerve her to go to the end and tell the truth.